he would draw over thirty thousand troops from afghanistan is one of the main pledges in barack obama's state of the union address party examines the foreign policy areas he wasn't keen to talk about. silence is broken the israeli media lifts a shroud of secrecy of the death of an alleged secret agent in custody despite the government trying to keep it quiet. and the unemployed frenchman sets himself on fire in front of the job center as the country's a number of approaches a record high. line from the new center here in moscow this is r.t. with the online on the screen twenty four hours a day. barack obama used the first state of the union address of his second term to

try and appease lawmakers and taxpayers making fresh promises to boost the economy and slash debt on foreign policy the us president also announced thirty four thousand troops will leave afghanistan by next february and he said no he looks at what he did and didn't say. after over a decade of war troops are coming home in twenty fourteen as obama put it obama points out that there are two missions now one to prepare handing afghan forces take over so that the country does not slip into chaos again the key word here again it almost seems as if it's now a stable place just today reports of ten civilians killed by a nato strike targeting taliban insurgents now obama spent most of his speech talking about the economy and taxes he failed to mention that so far the u.s. has invested over one hundred billion dollars in reconstruction of afghanistan and

that this year alone it's expected another thirty billion dollars could be spent in eight this as the afghan state is rated one of the most corrupt in the world despite red flags from a watchdog monitoring bad aid they say there's no way of ensuring all this money is going to the right place or whose hands the cash is falling into and that it's too dangerous in many places in afghanistan to safely observe what's happening where former and. some have become very rich including western officials well most afghans have been left with nothing many countries thrive on this war they make money there in their u.n. people others who are lined up and making fat salaries and while the life of afghan ordinary afghans have not changed we of course we have had some things like media. communication and this and that but. in relation to what was available and what could have been done drop in the bucket now obama also spoke of defending democracy

across the globe most notably the arab spring which is previously been held by his administration a great success especially libya egypt and tunisia those countries of course now still drowning in chaos and violence two years on well. ahmed has changed his tune a bit now saying well it's going to be messy those transitions also his tone on syria a bit distant considering a year ago the u.s. was insisting president off to moscow a lot of speculation about intervention what's going on now the president saying they will continue to put pressure on the syrian leader another pledge from obama to continue to push for legal and durable policy on counterterrorism no mention here of guantanamo drones or wiretapping and obama mentioned internet freedoms well sort of he flaunted signing an executive order on cyber defense but the order is really seen as

a response to congress's refusal to pass the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act or sis but last year in light of serious privacy concerns in other words a loophole is now available for cispa to effectively be put into action president obama has cited growing threats from cyber attacks but he will add to his usual says it's not clear whether the new measures would be used to protect the public or to pry into what their own too. when we look at what's going on here with the information sharing between the department of defense the government and others private corporations i think it raises significant concerns over whether the issue of defense is actually defending us or weakening us i mean we see recently the three largest papers in the united states washington post new york times wall street journal all had major scandals over the issue of cyber security now if they're sharing information with the government i think that raises a potential question well what about journalist e-mails and things of that nature will that have a chilling effect on whistleblowers in the government and so i think we have to ask

ourselves is generalize obviously generalized cybersecurity defense is important but ultimately is the way the obama administration is approaching it expanding department of defense type programs and not having safeguards that are very well explained to the people regarding civil liberties in place is that something that actually decreases our security by for example having a chilling effect on whistleblowers or just giving the government more of a big brother overview and really reducing our privacy the man who was out of work because died off to setting himself on fire in front of a job center in the french city of new and the forty three year old self him an eighteen after finding out he was in a legible for unemployment benefit the last time this happened in france was last august when a man died off the burning himself in paris well he has the details. said it reports that he had actually set a letter to some journalists saying that he was going to do this this week so the police had said that they had set of surveillance outside that employment agency

but they didn't manage to see him he was already on fire they said he had entered through a side street and therefore this tragedy had happened now the man did this after finding out that he he is no longer eligible for those unemployment benefits and this is not the first time it has happened in france in august we know that a fifty year old jobless man had done the same and this is a worrying sign for france for a country that has seen its unemployment rising for the past twenty months and this after a president had been elected on a campaign of jobs and growth so we haven't seen any improvements on this front so a lot has declared twenty thirteen as a battle for jobs he said that by the end of the year there would be he would be creating jobs for the french people however statistics show that by midyear the number is set to rise and let's not forget that more than three million french people this number does not include people who have quit the unemployment program because they simply have exhausted all their benefits similar to the case of the man who had just burgess self and also those young people who had never registered

or those who were in part time jobs if we look at the trend we've seen a lot of suicides and attempted suicides in countries like greece one of the hardest hit euro zone countries because of this eurozone crisis there's a general feeling of a still in the country a lot of people going out in protest we've also heard of stories of suicides in italy another hard hit country so if we're looking at the trend that's happening in europe we hope it does not continue but we could see a lot more of expressions of dissatisfaction. still to come the european leaders may think tax hikes will help to tackle the debt crisis but europe's wealthy are being lured away by low tax countries with small business left at home struggling to stay afloat a report on that is just ahead. but first a veil of silence over the death of a top secret prisoner has been lifted by the israeli media which had been gagged by a court order it surfaced follow a report in the australian press about

a man linked to the israeli secret service who hanged himself in prison after months of being held in secret but he has the details. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu summoned the editors of all the major israeli news outlets to an emergency meeting and in that meeting he asked them not to publish the story saying and i'm quoting that it would be embarrassing to a certain government agency not at first the editors did listen and all references to the original australian report were removed from israeli news web sites but later it was for back not only to the websites but also to all the radio and t.v. stations here and certainly sincerely also this morning it has been the headline news everyone though is referencing it as a report from australia not what we understand is that israeli parliament terence did oss the justice minister to confirm whether or not this report was true they also demanded to know if there were other prisoners who were being held in secret in israeli jails the justice minister's comments were and i'm quoting that there is

no doubt that if this information is accurate this is something that needs to be checked state senses gave news office in israel the green light to report on this parliamentary debate but nothing else but of course we're witnessing now that the reporting has gone much further than just this debate such a gag order it is important to say it is highly unusual in israel ways states military sense as well many and all of the local media to quote fallen sources on controversial topics such as the alleged israeli strike in syria last month what we also understand is that various human rights groups such as human rights watch as well as the israeli civil rights movement has been aware of this particular incident for quite some time now the australian media is reporting that this man came to live in israel when he was a youngster he made what is called idea and he was recruiting on the stand by the messiah these ready secret service something went wrong and we've been given no

reason for him being imprisoned but they respect the nation that it would have had to be connected somehow with espionage and sensitive state secrets the former foreign minister avigdor lieberman has said that left wing parliamentarians have damaged israeli security by bringing this issue to the fore in the first place. twenty questions remain after that israel spy secret was revealed economist and senior correspondent for israel's how it's newspaper or in i spoke to middle early and he told me that the entire situation is a source of embarrassment for the country on one level it's an espionage story and mystery regarding the foreign intelligence service mossad and the tragic. circumstances under which one of its operatives apparently found his death on another level. government versus press story and the press here has been struggling against various government agencies and gradually has been

able to leave at least some of the secrecy surrounding this story there was a gag order here apparently and defer this was the case and one cannot confirm it independently from israel but again embarrassing as it is one has to rely on foreign sources if that is true and a gag order was signed by a judge then one would have been subject to prosecution if one were to violate it so apparently even though these really press is far from being lazy for the last two years it has waited passively for someone abroad in this case australia to break the story. still to come in the program grim predictions for the u.k. the growing gap between rich and poor and sinking living standards that's what experts

predict for much of the british population report on that in a few minutes. also examine the violence that's plaguing mali off to the un human rights chief says the situation in the country is swiftly deteriorating following the french intervention that is coming up after this break as well as on the story stay with us. because if we can we know if you. choose the consensus. choose to get to. choose the stories that impact your life choose me access to.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you know. i'm trying hard welcome to the big picture. here in moscow the news continues now there's been a dramatic growth in the gap between the rich and the poor in the u.k. the stall figures revealed by a british think tank also one that families but since you have fifteen years of squeezed incomes until living standards recover to pretty crisis levels all these

pretty boy cuts into what's behind the numbers. imagine living on the brink financially need to be told that it's going to get was that's the reality facing some ten million brits living on middle incomes economists at the think tank the resolution foundation have issued a landmark report with a stark warning to the government they've got to tackle low wages or face economic stagnation for generations to come the report claims that for too many households their money no longer stretches to the bare essentials because of falling wages and rising inflation and buying a house is becoming a fantasy for too many britons already millions of citizens in the u.k. struggle to pay their monthly bills have no savings in the bank and can no longer afford a family holiday so what we're seeing at the moment is the squeeze on living standards

which is affecting households throughout the entire distribution and that's mainly a result of the recession and austerity policies but actually for a very sizable group about ten million adults who live in low to middle income households actually started some time before failing to do anything. and ended up with family and households have no increase in that in living standards and. first of all social problems because it's a very large group to be in that situation but also it's an economic problem because because this group of consumers so they are one of the drivers of economic growth their report found that on top of the recession there are systemic problems with the way that the british economy is run making life even harder. if things stay the same the average household by twenty twenty will have less money to spend than it did five years ago person is now so squeezed that almost seven out of ten brits say that they have to cut back on spending just in order to get by but the

governor of the bank of england saying that economic recovery could be in sight it looks like that for those at the bottom of the british economy that's no guarantee that life is going to get any easier. tax hikes are still the default plan for the nation's trying to get out of debt while the super rich can flee to places that won't take such a fifty slice of a cash small business is left behind say livelihoods are at risk and that is pressure all of a found out he's a leading man of stage and screen however european heads of state will be hoping share our debt by do doesn't become the leader of a tax exodus by the super rich funds while a decision to push through a seventy five percent top rate of tax on those earning over one million euros saw the actor up sticks and head to russia europe has some of the highest rates of taxation in the world with many giving the lion's share of the things to the state

. can be a balancing act of course you want to run a successful business but if you make over a certain amount you find yourself paying out huge quantities of tax over fifty percent. there are warnings for europe that when compared to low tax countries like russia they could lose their competitive edge if they're a country with low taxes and with high taxes capital flow well to country with low taxes in the same is true for people with talent there's always going to be people that think the taxes are too high but a growing number actually starting to think that it's becoming detrimental to the development of business but he can't owns a whole it company in munich currently he employs around ninety people transporting everything from the small to the big and bulky all over mainland europe he say's that lowering the current rate of tax would not just make big changes to his business but also to the lives of his staff when other nick and his current it

would be super first i could pay higher salaries this is a very important issue right now due to the rise in the cost of living also i can invest more into the company and grow the business even employ more people everyone benefits something that is impossible under the current tax system. and those in power argue that the problem in european countries right now is that taxpayers want to have the best of both worlds big management of the phenomenon we face regarding taxes is that everyone wants to pay as little as possible however no one is willing to give up the services that those taxes go to pay for them with few signs of any major tax cuts on the horizon in europe businesses like this one going to have to continue to struggle to bring home the bacon but it comes to saving fifty development these are all other r.t.

. just have more stories and videos for you on our website on comments online all the time and here's a look at what we've got there for you at the moment just a couple of many stories there all for taking a battering from mother nature residents in parts of new york which were hit hard is. are in for an unfortunate surprise from the city's texas authorities. also that moment the iraqi capital baghdad takes its first steps on the catwalk in ten years the fashion show is seen as a symbolic break from years of turmoil since the u.s. invasion more on that story. called.

the united nations says the french military intervention in mali has made the situation in the country worse with fears that the west african nation will fall into a downward spiral of violence human rights groups are concerned about ethnic reprisal killings and accused forces of murdering suspected militants. who's been traveling around the country throughout the conflict reports for r.t. . the united nations already describes the situation in mali as a disaster the u.n. human rights commission says the country's caught in a spiral of violence fraught with grievous consequences the situation has been made worse in the wake of ferocious fighting in and around the city of northern mali following four days of fierce resistance from insurgents complete with suicide attacks the french military has been forced to conclude that some of the locals

made an extremist that however some of the key areas in this conflict are still off limits to international journalists with the french army denying us passage saying it was for our own security the u.n. high commissioner for human rights not the palais made it plain in a recent statement that the situation in mali is only deteriorated following the foreign military intervention you know that the insurgency in mali is aggravated by ethnic clashes. camera crew witnessed instances of exit and brutality perpetrated by the mali an army and survive. the military are not the only ones and gauged in hunting down people of arable quarry origin are believed to be part of the insurgency and even the locals are going after them as well and for some time it has been difficult to find people from either of those ethnic groups anywhere in mali this brings us back to the fact that more than three hundred thirty thousand people have been forced to flee from their homes because of the crisis the last

straw for all those refugees and indeed for all of mali has been a statement by al qaida coming out of the arabian peninsula which calls upon every muslim to join the holy war against france a war that is being fought in mali against the will of its people. are. reports say qatar is handed the syrian embassy to the opposition the building has been closed for about a year after the gulf nation ceased to recognize the sounds ruling regime one of syria's opposition leaders claims he's been appointed ambassador to the syrian political activists yes and told me that i was trying to beef up the failing syrian national coalition. it's not an addition to the political weight of the syrian national coalition in my view this is a this is primarily primarily to reinject some life into the syrian national coalition especially after the several blows that it received

so it's was formed we know that they want to. overthrow the regime they couldn't so far they want to achieve some liberated lands and more than in northern syria and they didn't so far and they also want to form a transitional government on syrian soil and they're meeting in us istanbul recently failed in doing so so i think. this movement by by qatar especially the us qatar considers itself the main backer of this national mission because it was its own project so it's it's science and mask and we inject some life into it after after the deficiencies. in ukraine a passenger plane carrying about forty people has crash landed near the city of him yet it's believed that the aircraft which was on an internal flight missed the runway and overturned before bursting into flames the full scale of casualties

isn't yet clear but only indications suggest at least five people are being killed with two still missing the cause of the crash landing is under investigation we'll bring you more details as we get them. you know the international headlines nineteen insurgents were killed in thailand after the north to predawn assault on a military base in the country south. over one hundred heavily armed fighters stormed the marine camp on the malaysian border state troops repelled the attack suffering no injuries themselves the raid is the heaviest militant attack for several years in the rest of region. in bahrain police used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of protesters in the country's capital one day before the two year anniversary of the uprising people marched in the streets carrying bahraini flags and chanting anti-government slogans accusing the ruling regime of corruption and human rights violations arenas have been staging demonstrations since early two thousand and eleven the modern political reform they now want the removal of the ruling. family blaming them for the violent crackdown

on protests. religious education is making a major comeback in tunisia two years after the regime which banned the teaching of islam was toppled the current government has no control of private muslim schools springing up across the country and the worry is they're spreading extremism ortiz in english to visitors a school where the qur'an is the main subject. tunisia's learned some tough lessons in the wake of its revolt but now the report card for what's going on in its schools is facing examination in the school in one of the poorest districts of the tunisian capital children come to learn about the qur'an and the way of life of true muslims religious education was banned under the old regime but it's making a comeback in a big way the rise of islam islam has led to an increase in the number of religious schools are springing up across the country these schools are private operating outside of the control of state officials who have no say over what's being taught

in these schools and some worry that this may lead to a rise in the number of young extremists even many religious experts agree filling young minds with religious doctrines may not be the best way to bring up children. what do i read on one of the papers sent by a three year old girl to her mother with a message my beloved mom teach me about the afterlife the same way you teach about this life is this a way to teach three year old children we can see it clearly attempts to brainwash these children dr from loony carried out an extensive research of religious schools and to nice to find out whether critics were right to say that they were damaging to the country's post revolutionary development she found most schools were primarily focused on teaching strict islamic values without worrying about the effect these methods may have on youngsters. i have noticed that all female

teachers at these schools where any cub while teaching you can't see her face this is in contradiction with what's known in psychology as communication how can she communicate with the kids if her face is covered in motions and movement of vital to kids and social interaction such things do not contradict our values and morals . but parents who send their children to study at these schools believe they are on the right track. educating their children with muslim values is the way to ensure that they will lead a proper life from childhood study in the koran improves memory increases thinking abilities and says the right course for the rest of their lives. at the moment not even the ministry of education is able to say exactly how many religious schools there are in tunisia after the revolution they sprung up over the country many operating without license from the state the government has acknowledged the problem but has its hands full trying to keep the economy together. is on the back

burner it's this absence of control that especially worrisome on top of the concerns about extremist salafist groups gaining ground. these groups don't believe in democracy republic and freedom they consider them to be against their religion they want to impose their way of life on by force as if they know better than other people after the arab spring revolt tunisians were eager to embrace what they hoped would be a new way of life but with radical islam permeating more and more spheres of everyday life these children's future i mean not be exactly what many parents had hoped for in their quest for freedom and democracy in tunisia. r.t. . so that brings up today with a man i'll be about with a news team with wolf in just over half an hour from now the meantime on business next with casey casey you would be talking about illegal capital outflow from russia from russia exactly right in the last eighteen years we've had it i have

a two hundred billion dollars and that's really something president vladimir putin has said that he wants to tackle in order to get russia more invested friend they saw be looking into that and plenty more markets run down of course so coming up off of the right bill it's like having. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world

has been seeing from the streets of canada. showing operations around the day. i. i. i i i i i i i i i i . hello welcome to business now illegal capital outflow from russia amounted to over two hundred eleven billion dollars over the last eighteen years as according to the global financial integrity organization illegal inflows and outflows of capital provide the existence of the shadow economy in russia which includes the proceeds

of crime corruption and tax evasion now the total of the shadow economy is estimated at forty six percent of russia's g.d.p. now this figure comes out of the shadows the same week that russia's president vladimir putin introduced a draft law that restricts investment abroad barring senior officials from holding bank accounts all stocks outside the russian borders now the law is an attempt by putin to fight corruption isn't his ambition to make russia more investment friendly and earlier i spoke to jacob knell chief economist from morgan stanley russia and i asked him about this rate of illegal outflow and putin's attempts to combat it. it's always hard to know how to measure something that is illegal and therefore hidden the actual number for capital outflows provided by the central

bank is much higher for instance last year we know it was about sixty billion dollars the year before eighty billion dollars so much larger number than the ten billion dollars or so that this report is talking about per year. there is a line on the central bank balance of payments called fictitious transactions where people are underreporting imports over reporting exports in order to move funds abroad but some of that may not be. may not be the proceeds of crime what this report is talking about is money that's generated from some kind of criminal activity that is then and so necessarily it's a somewhat speculative number but of course there's wide agreement that the flows of illegal money are quite substantial and this is an ongoing problem in russia indeed and that a putin has come up with a new law department to ban state officials and their family from owning

a foreign financial assets abroad is this the way forward in order to avoid such reports telling out in the future do you think this is the right thing to do during forwards where you know money combating money laundering started out with trying to track drug money and then and then after nine eleven it became more focused on trying to track down terrorists farms and over the years the o.e.c.d. through the financial action task force has developed a sort of manual of best practice if you like and one of the key steps in trying to control the limits of the phenomenon is to make sure that you regulate your banks properly and make sure that all money flows through banks and that is a fact what is the purpose of this law is to try and ensure that. money is first of all deposited in a bank is regulated by the central bank of russia so that the authorities can keep an eye. on the flows of money that are happening i think that it's. i think it's

a reasonable it's a reasonable requirement from an economic point of view i welcome a liberal capital account like we have in russia which supports investment flows however. there's been too much associated flows that have been of dubious origin and i think in so far as the authorities can get the balance right between better regulatory control of illegal flows of money and an open capital account that would be supportive for investment. and how we're listing is it that the russian government will be able to get some of these billions back is that a possibility or no let's think money comes into an economy when people feel confident about their property rights and is a decent investment climate and they have a prospect of making money making a good return on their money. and so i think the general problem really i would put

somewhat differently not will this particular money that went abroad come back but can russia improve its investment climate so that there's more money coming into russia whether it's owned by russians or owned by foreigners so that sort of being the we are the government could see investment rising and growth rising in line with its objectives. and moving on despite boasting the biggest gas reserves in the wild rushes gas problem is now in the balkan basket the company is what has dropped by a third in the past year now the cheapest among global oil and gas majors tatyana. she's got more. yes it's bad news for russia's gas giant gazprom capitalization on the moscow stock exchange has reached its law was to level in three years the company is now worth just over eight hundred billion dollars for comparison the

market's capitalization of the most expensive oil company exxon mobil is more than four hundred billion dollars followed by petro china at over three hundred billion shell and chevron over two hundred analysts say the major reason for gas from plunging value is higher taxes the market also didn't like the company's increase in capital investment and decision to dividends and added a say the reseal more room for a downside but pension to gas problem may be buying. into the ukrainian transportation seized him and if this scenario he's materializing then there might be an additional don't say. that. he said don't have gas last two years. because all that in the proximity they'll be done dose of medication before gets so all you can in your system is much much bigger and the same price got. you clean

your customers the don't say it might be. bought on the up side analysts say gazprom may become one of the most interesting dividend stories globally as the company is now changing its dividend policy market players say that they are betting on the gas boom as a huge infrastructure monopoly with high yielding doodles rather than the upstream production company that is doomed for zero free cash flows for the next several years. russia's leading oil company rossi have to has signed loan agreements to attract over fourteen billion dollars from a group of foreign banks these funds will be used to purchase fifty percent of teens from a.o.l. a consortium of russian billionaires now according to all snatched the interest rates all said to be one of the lowest in the russia market now fifteen foreign

banks will be involved including bank of america merrill lynch b m p power and bank of china as well. and staying with russia we're going to check out the markets and see what happened in moscow you can see significant gains for the r.t.s. on the mice it said tube percent nearly as you can see pretty much most of the blue chips ended up above the line we had read to be russia second biggest lead to hit up more than five percent a retailer dixy added more than three percent and that's after reporting a twenty three percent jump in revenues in january that was the standout for march as for the ruble you'll be able to see it was a mixed performance today we had it harder against the u.s. dollar made managing to gain just a year you can say it's pretty far left actually let's check out your i can see what happened on the wednesday session and there was a currency of the euro zone industrial data actually that was giving some support

to the markets as well as earnings reports from heavyweights such as social generale and heineken as well drawing attention boosting the mood overall as for longdon though there's a few whispers that the bank of england could be boosting more stimulus measures so we are watching out for that one as our investors wall street that is check out what happened in the u.s. and stocks still continue to fluctuate between gains and losses still makes as you can see just meanwhile indices are routed to a five year high on average as investors why. a economic report owns side president barack obama he's vowed to spend money on infrastructure and environmental spending that came out of the union address that we will watch and i we also to mention that consumers increase that saying as well we tell goods when out of a follow up pace in the month before suppose and see if news on wall street to out

really is not apparently down to a tax hike so that is indeed the markets but coming up here. we interview the u.s. foreign affairs clyde prestowitz to stay with us for that i'll be back tomorrow. helicopters flying through the air day and night rounds of assault rifle ammo popping as the choppers buzz over the land now this unique form of hell of terror is no longer restricted to those in vietnam in the middle east now houston miami residents of the good old usa can get in on the fun houston residents of terror called nine one one and scrambled for cover and even to schools put on lockdown as a military helicopters participate in

a multi-agency training for real in miami at night in the middle of downtown onlookers caught video on their telephones of blackhawk helicopters pumping loud blank on to the people below and maybe even as i speak a flexibly scheduled military drill could be happening in jesper county south carolina you know when i was a kid they tell us about how that year old soviet union would parade their tanks around how there were soldiers all over their oppressed country even in one thousand nine hundred four or will make it a point to describe our military helicopters would eternally be overhead and a dystopian nightmare world. now we're living the nightmare the united states is a huge country there's plenty of room on remote army bases to do your training also last time i checked afghanistan don't look like downtown miami just who are you training to kill anyways knock off the terror training but that's just my opinion.

emissions free credit taishan st. george free to make sure the free. free. free. old free book video for your media projects the free media. today i'm joined by mr clyde prestowitz the founder and president of the economic strategy institute he writes for foreign policy affairs and most recently he wrote

in defense of nominating chuck hagel for secretary of defense with him we discuss this nomination thank you very much for joining us on r.t. let me start with this why chuck hagel well i think very important is because president obama likes him and trusts him. and thinks that he. do a good job at the defense department i think we have to remember that chuck hagel was an early supporter of barack obama in two thousand and eight when he was first campaigning for president he traveled with obama to iraq and afghanistan at the time. and it's important that he's a republican and so this demonstrates that the president on the one hand this is able to attract at least some kind of republican support and secondly that the president is able to suck the message through this kind of

a point about let's not forget chuck hagel is a veteran of the vietnam war he was a noncommissioned officer in the vietnam war. and as a result of that. he became very very cautious about war. it's he will be the first. non-commissioned officer ever to be secretary of defense i think that's also a very powerful message. and the republicans actually see him as a republican well some republicans do it let me remind you of president ronald reagan who began his career as a democrat. wound up as a what we call that the time a conservative republican president and reagan always so. that he had not changed his views but that his party the democratic party had left him. i think hagel is in

a similar position is what for most of my life people all thought of as a republican it's only in the last ten or fifteen years that the republican party has shifted his views away from. natural position and so i would say today probably most republicans see him. but the but there are still some who do the previous defense minister if i could say that he was talking about not reducing presence in the middle east yet expanding presence in asia that hagel doesn't seem to be i'm not sure it's completely different i mean as you know from your broad experience here in washington all of the messages have various audiences. so let's keep in mind that obama when he became elected said he was going to wind down the war in iraq said that he was going to withdraw all eventually from afghanistan and he has been doing that now there are those

in the american body politic who are opposed. and so obama has had to be able to carry with him joran is in the congress and in the country and sometimes in building a majority it's useful to have a secretary of defense who sounds tough even if the president's position is not so tough so i shouldn't think we should over interpret panetta but i think it's important to see hey goal was as a message to various audiences to an american audience to american military audience that the emphasis is going to be less on the military to foreign audiences the american is going to be more interested in talking and fighting. and the particularly i think to two audiences in the middle east

that. there's room for cutting deals between america and iran america and other people in the middle east and we saw how iran received that message you know meaning hagel how do you see that did you think the u.s. policy on iran will change. in the second term of obama having chuck hagel as secretary of defense well i don't know if i would say will change because i don't think obama has actually been taking a confrontational line with iran but i think any president in his second term is no longer running for the white house he's running for the history books. and that means maybe bolder moves the president has more flexibility to take. new positions and so i do think

that president obama will try very hard to come to some kind of a more stable arrangement with iran and in the middle east you were talking about messages that obama but what is the message that well i think a largely sent to the middle east by choosing by obama is sending the message that he's not the president from israel. while the united states strongly supports israel and is an ally of israel and it will defend israel that the united states has a broader interest in the middle east and that. he the president obama. is. pursuing a broad long term american interests in establishing a stable order in the middle east one of the issues that people are criticizing haydel for where a lot of the criticism actually comes because of some statements he made in the

past namely i am a senator from nebraska not from israel the jewish lobby how do you think that will affect his nomination well i think his statement that he is the senator from nebraska from israel will actually be very positive for him. i think i think most americans will say yeah that's right he should be the senator from nebraska from israel of course there will be those supporters of israel who interpret it in a negative way but i think on balance that will be a pause a positive i think his comment about the jewish lobby. we're oh oh. because verse i don't think that it will stop his nomination. but it would have been better if he had said the israel lobby because there are of course many american jews who don't support. the positions of israel

and so by using the term jewish instead of israel that kind of cloud the issue but having said that we also have to be realistic and the fact is that the israel lobby in america is of course very much. composed not only of jews but there are many leading jews who obviously are part of a senator who is now nominated for defense secretary has to defend himself for saying things like i am a senator from from nebraska and not from israel i how do you know this is such a taboo issue it became in the u.s. that it's untouchable and is this sending a message maybe to other. politicians that maybe this is a subject that i should not even criticize talk about because in the future it will let me know this is

a complex complex issue and i don't know if we have enough time to for me to explain the top down the peculiar taboos of american politics but. i would say that the this is not unique for example you have to go back in american history so for example there's a large irish population in america and for many many years discussion of the northern ireland problem between. ireland and the u.k. was very difficult in the united states because of the influence of this irish political group in the united states so the israel thing is not unique. you just have. to know that it's sometimes american policy all politics are strange every country has its place so it's of secrecy but i think to your question of this is some kind of message that people have to be very very careful about speaking about

israel i think not i think it's the opposite the fact that the president is going to head with this nomination that it probably will be confirmed i think demonstrates that you can. make statements that are not entirely pure and it doesn't stop your career he did say that he supports israel but people don't see that as emotionally well i mean remember that there are people who would like to stop his nomination. politics is a context sport. and there are important people in the united states who would like to stop him so they're looking for any excuse i mean if he threw chewing gum on the sidewalk they would criticize him for throwing chewing gum on the sidewalk they're just looking for an excuse this is the way they gave it his

confirmed and many people said that he will be confirmed pressure do you think there will be on him. oh i don't think there'll be a great deal of pressure on him. of course being secretary of defense is not a small job but i don't think that there will be extra pressure on him as opposed to other secretaries of defense i think there is a lot of resistance to his nomination because there may be agreement between obama and and hague all that doesn't mean that there's agreement between obama and senator mcconnell or other important leaders tell me more about this i mean if there is well i mean in the first place we have. in the united states a two party democracy and so the president is of the democratic party but part of the congress is controlled by the republican party the house of representatives and the senate is not controlled by the republican party but the

republican party has often blocking power. in the senate. there are also many many other interests there are business interests there are military interests there are. social interests all of them looking for. budgetary support all of them looking for a publisher they all of them fighting each other for attention. and they look at every nomination the secretary of defense secretary of state they look at all these dominations from the perspective is this going to help me or is this going to maybe not help me if it's not going to help me then maybe i should try to stop it. it's important to keep in mind that the united states is not a parliamentary system in a parliamentary system the prime minister has a majority and he controls the legislature and he names whomever he wants america

doesn't work that way the president doesn't control the the legislature. legislature must agree to his nominations he doesn't always get the nominee that he wants so it's much more of a fight within the internal american system than in a parliamentary system. i never knew adam lanza in person but i was in the same high school is that he was

younger than me just a bit younger. i always thought he was different i always into something funny he rarely talks and you don't he was a shy kid. i don't know if anyone was friends with him i also don't know of anyone who was particularly mean to the what i do know is that it was very clear that this person was not like everybody else. can imagine the level of mental illness that would be present to murder children. america's you know so when you go on this there would be an american behind every tree with a gun. i think for kids growing up in this environment is good for them at an early age to least see the gun and respect it because they need to know what kind of damage it can do. this is our first task as

a society. keeping our children safe. this is how we will be judged. live. live. live live. live

live . live live. live .